The better Claude Code gets, the more I’m convinced: the spec is becoming the product, not the code. If agents can implement anything from a good enough description, then the description is the thing. The code is a build artifact. And that changes who matters in a project — suddenly the domain expert who can’t code but knows the business inside out is more valuable than ever. I’ve been obsessing over this for months. Tried spec-kit, tried BMAD — both solid. But they’re built for devs writing specs for devs. In my day job I work with product owners, business analysts, QA people. They know the domain cold but they’re not touching a terminal. And they shouldn’t have to. So the question I couldn’t let go of: how do you get non-coders into a spec-driven workflow that still lives in Git? I ended up building a VS Code extension around this idea (full disclosure: I’m the creator — side project, free, open source). It’s called SPECLAN. The core of it: Specs are Markdown files with YAML frontmatter , one file per entity — goals, features, requirements, scenarios, acceptance criteria, tests Everything lives in a speclan/ directory in your repo. Plain files. Git diffs, branches, PRs — all work WYSIWYG editor so non-technical people can write specs without touching raw Markdown Tree view showing the full hierarchy from business goals down to tests Claude integration for AI-assisted spec writing and refinement Status lifecycle (draft → review → approved → locked) — you know what’s moving and what’s stable The Markdown approach works without the extension. The extension just makes it practical for people who don’t want to wrangle YAML frontmatter by hand. But I’m posting this less for the tool and more because I want to hear how others are dealing with this shift: Are you writing specs at all, or just prompting Claude ad-hoc and iterating? Who writes them in your workflow — devs only, or do domain experts contribute? How do you keep specs in sync with code as the project evolves? Has anyone found a workflow that actually includes non-developers? I don’t think anyone has cracked this yet. The tooling is moving so fast that last month’s workflow is already outdated. Curious what’s working for you. GitHub | Marketplace | speclan.net submitted by /u/thlandgraf
Originally posted by u/thlandgraf on r/ClaudeCode